“Help her,” the voice within him said.
“Aunt Poll” Garion threw the thought at her, “Remember Durnik!”
He knew without knowing how he knew that this was the one thing that could sustain her in her deadly struggle. He ranged through his memory, throwing images of Durnik at her—of the smith’s strong hands at work at his forge—of his serious eyes—of the quiet sound of his voice—and most of all of the good man’s unspoken love for her, the love that had been the center of Durnik’s entire life.
She had begun involuntarily to move, no more than a slight shifting of her weight in preparation for that first fatal step in response to Torak’s overpowering command. Once she had made that step, she would be lost. But Garion’s memories of Durnik struck her like a blow. Her shoulders, which had already begun to droop in defeat, suddenly straightened, and her eyes flashed with renewed defiance.
“Never!” she told the expectantly waiting God. “I will not!”
Torak’s face slowly stiffened. His eyes blazed as he brought the full, crushing force of his will to bear upon her, but she stood firmly against all that he could do, clinging to the memory of Durnik as if to something so solid that not even the will of the Dark God could tear her from it.
A look of baffled frustration contorted Torak’s face as he perceived that she would never yield—that her love would be forever denied to him. She had won, and her victory was like a knife twisting slowly inside him. Thwarted, enraged, maddened by her now-unalterable will to resist, Torak raised his face and suddenly howled—a shocking, animallike sound of overwhelming frustration.
“Then perish both!” he raged. “Die with thy father!”
And with that, he once more raised his deadly sword.
Unflinching, Aunt Pol faced the raging God.
“Now, Belgarion!” The voice cracked in Garion’s mind.
The Orb, which had remained cold and dead throughout all the dreadful confrontation between Aunt Pol and the maimed God, suddenly flared into life, and the sword of the Rivan King exploded into fire, filling the crypt with an intense blue light. Garion leaped forward, extending his sword to catch the deadly blow which was already descending upon Aunt Pol’s unprotected face.
The steel sound of blade against blade was like the striking of a great bell, and it rang within the crypt, shimmering and echoing from the walls. Torak’s sword, deflected by the flaming blade, plowed a shower of sparks from the flagstone floor. The God’s single eye widened as he recognized all in one glance the Rivan King, the flaming sword and the blazing Orb of Aldur. Garion saw in the look that Torak had already forgotten Aunt Pol and that now the maimed God’s full attention was focused on him.
“And so thou hast come at last, Belgarion,” the God greeted him gravely. “I have awaited thy coming since the beginning of days. Thy fate awaits thee here. Hail, Belgarion, and farewell.”
His arm lashed back, and he swung a vast blow, but Garion, without even thinking, raised his own sword and once again the crypt rang with the bell note of blade against blade.
“Thou art but a boy, Belgarion,” Torak said. “Wilt thou pit thyself against the might and invincible will of a God? Submit to me, and I will spare thy life.”
The will of the God of Angarak was now directed at him, and in that instant, Garion fully understood how hard Aunt Pol’s struggle had been. He felt the terrible compulsion to obey draining the strength from him. But suddenly a vast chorus of voices rang down through all the centuries to him, crying out the single word, “No!” All the lives of all who preceded him had been directed at this one moment, and those lives infused him now. Though he alone held Iron-grip’s sword, Belgarion of Riva was not alone, and Torak’s will could not sway him.
In a move of absolute defiance, Garion again raised his flaming sword.
“So be it, then,” Torak roared. “To the death, Belgarion!”
At first it seemed but some trick of the flickering light that filled the tomb, but almost as soon as that thought occurred, Garion saw that Torak was growing larger, swelling upward, towering, expanding. With an awful wrenching sound, he shouldered aside the rusted iron roof of the tomb, bursting upward.
Once again without thinking, without even stopping to consider how to do it, Garion also began to expand, and he too exploded through the confining ceiling, shuddering away the rusty debris as he rose.
In open air among the decaying ruins of the City of Night the two titanic adversaries faced each other beneath the perpetual cloud that blotted out the sky.
“The conditions are met,” the dry voice spoke through Garion’s lips.
“So it would seem,” another, equally unemotional voice came from Torak’s steel-encased mouth.
“Do you wish to involve others?” Garion’s voice asked.
“It hardly seems necessary. These two have sufficient capacity for what must be brought to bear upon them.”
“Then let it be decided here.”
“Agreed.”
And with that Garion felt a sudden release as all constraint was removed from him. Torak, also released, raised Cthrek Goru, his lips drawn back in a snarl of hate.
Their struggle was immense. Rocks shattered beneath the colossal force of deflected blows. The sword of the Rivan King danced in blue flames, and Cthrek Goru, Torak’s blade of shadows, swept a visible darkness with it at every blow. Beyond thought, beyond any emotion but blind hatred, the two swung and parried and lurched through the broken ruins, crushing all beneath them. The elements themselves erupted as the fight continued. The wind shrieked through the rotting city, tearing at the trembling stones. Lightning seethed about them, glaring and flickering. The earth rumbled and shook beneath their massive feet. The featureless cloud that had concealed the City of Night beneath its dark mantle for five millenia began to boil and race above them. Great patches of stars appeared and disappeared in the roiling middle of the surging cloud. The Grolims, both human and nonhuman, aghast at the towering struggle that had suddenly erupted in their very midst, fled shrieking in terror.
Garion’s blows were directed at Torak’s blind side, and the Dark God flinched from the fire of the Orb each time the flaming sword struck, but the shadow of Cthrek Goru put a deathly chill into Garion’s blood each time it passed over him.
They were more evenly matched than Garion had imagined possible. Torak’s advantage of size had been erased when they had both swelled into immensity, and Garion’s inexperience was offset by Torak’s maiming.
It was the uneven ground that betrayed Garion. Retreating before a sudden flurry of massive blows, he felt one heel catch on a heap of tumbled rock, and the rotten stones crumbled and rolled beneath his feet. Despite his scrambling attempt to keep his balance, he fell.
Torak’s single eye blazed in triumph as he raised the dark sword. But, seizing his sword hilt in both hands, Garion raised his burning blade to meet that vast blow. When the swords struck, edge to edge, a huge shower of sparks cascaded down over Garion.
Again Torak raised Cthrek Goru, but a strange hunger flickered across his steel-encased face.
“Yield!” he roared.
Garion stared up at the huge form towering over him, his mind racing.
“I have no wish to kill thee, boy,” Torak said, almost pleading. “Yield and I will spare thy life.”
And then Garion understood. His enemy was not trying to kill him, but was striving instead to force him to submit. Torak’s driving need was for domination! This was where the real struggle between them lay!
“Throw down thy sword, Child of Light, and bow before me,” the God commanded, and the force of his mind was like a crushing weight.
“I will not,” Garion gasped, wrenching away from that awful compulsion. “You may kill me, but I will not yield.”
Torak’s face twisted as if his perpetual agony had been doubled by Garion’s refusal.
“Thou must,” he almost sobbed. “Thou art helpless before me. Submit to me.”